Fyonn
did their best!
There are a lot of things you could say about Xenosaga, like how long the cutscenes are or how utterly silent most of the game is. What I'm going to focus on in this post is cold hard facts about the game's systems.
First, when you win a battle, all your characters get EXP. Nice! The characters that participated in battle gain Technique Points, Ether Points (not the Ether Points you use to cast spells, this is a different resource with the same name), and Skill Points.
Now, Technique Points let you upgrade you Techniques. Techniques are pretty much Deathblows from Xenogears: powerful but free special attacks. Each Technique has three upgradeable qualities: Tech (1-50), Speed (Low or High), and Wait (A2 - A0). Tech increases how powerful a Technique is, but the game does not tell you how powerful a given Technique is. You can see that R-Blade is Tech Level 3, but not how that compares to R-Drill at Tech Level 2. Speed effects whether or not the Technique can be set to Square-Circle/Triangle-Circle. Low Speed Techniques can only be set to Square-Square-Circle/Triangle-Triangle-Circle/Square-Triangle-Circle/Triangle-Square-Circle. Speed upgrades are exorbitantly expensive because the developers correctly determined High Speed Techniques are broken as heck. Every button you press in a combo string costs 2AP, and your characters only generate 4AP per turn, so High Speed Techniques can be used every turn without sacrificing any action economy efficiency. Wait determines how long it will be before you can act again after using a Technique - the lower the number the sooner. This barely matters, and as such, is pretty much free. All Techniques are either short-range or long-range. Long-range techniques can only be equipped to Triangle-Circle and Triangle-Triangle-Circle. Short-range techniques can only be equipped to the other slots.
Next, let's take a brief detour to talk about Equipment: most characters have a weapon they use in all their attacks, and it can be upgraded. Some characters fight with their bodies and instead have an auxilliary weapon they can spend 6AP on to deal similar damage as one of their 2AP attacks. Why this works like this is between Xenosaga and God. Some characters of both kinds can equip bullets to their weapons to change their properties. Every character has three armor/accessory slots. Only one piece of armor for body and head each can be equipped, but not everyone can equip head armor for some reason. Accessories can be equipped to all three slots if you want, however.
Skill Points can be spent to learn Skills from unequipped accessories. Skills are what accessories do, but now you don't have to have the accessory equipped, or can put on both the Skill and accessory for double effect. Also, each character has three Skill slots, making an effective total of up to six accessory effects per character at any given time.
Ether Points can be spent to cast spells in battle. Don't confuse them with Ether Points, which can be spent learning spells from each character's unique skill tree (but don't confuse them with Skills, which are a different thing we already talked about). Spells don't have an unlock cost. Instead, the prior spell has an Evolve cost. Anything branching off of a spell can be "Evolved" to by paying the original spell's Evolve cost. Also, you can spend half a spell's Evolve cost to teach it to a different character. There is functional overlap between spells from different characters, but the cost/power/range/equip-cost ratio can be different. Once a character knows a spell one way or another, it can be set for use. Each character has twelve spell slots, but spells might take more than one slot.
Additionally, human-or-close-enough characters can be assigned to an Anti-Gnosis Weapon System, or AGWS (commonly pronounced "eh-guhs" a bit like "aegis"). Once assigned, the appropriate character can spend a turn getting into or out of their AGWS. Each AGWS can be equipped with up to three weapons. AGWSs have two hands, two shoulders, and one auxiliary slot, but you can only use three total. AGWS weapons tend to have per-battle ammo and higher AP costs, but are about as strong as Techniques to compensate. If your AGWS has two of the hand weapon equipped, they can spend 6AP on W-Act, a more powerful attack that uses both weapons simultaneously, even if the AP cost for using both in one turn would be otherwise impossible. AGWS have FP instead of HP, and while they have a lot and have high defense, it can only be repaired at maintenance hangars or using relatively rare items. Each AGWS also has three gear slots, which are accessories for AGWSs. AGWSs do not level up, instead you must purchase better frames and generators to increase their FP and DPow (???) respectively.
In battle, characters are take turns, and turn order is displayed in a sort of truncated version of FFX's turn order line. Characters can build up Boost Points in battle and spend them to take their turn immediately after the current one, so long as they aren't already on the turn order line. The main reason to do this is the Event Slot, which advances one step every turn, and effects the results of actions taken. The slots are as follows: Empty (no changes), Critical (improved critical hit rate), Boost (improved Boost Point accumulation from attacking), and finally Points Up (2, 4, or 10 times more TP, EP, and SP from killing an enemy).
Now, here's my advice for fighting battles using all these complex systems: Upgrade a short-range and a long-range Techniques speed for each character as soon as possible, then funnel some points into those Techniques' Tech level. Save some points to eventually do this same thing with their first all enemies Technique. Win every battle by pressing Square then Circle or Triangle then Circle. Try to kill big enemies on the Points Up turn. Congratulations, you are now unstoppable.
Why did the designers decide to make Xenosaga five different games at once? We will never know.
First, when you win a battle, all your characters get EXP. Nice! The characters that participated in battle gain Technique Points, Ether Points (not the Ether Points you use to cast spells, this is a different resource with the same name), and Skill Points.
Now, Technique Points let you upgrade you Techniques. Techniques are pretty much Deathblows from Xenogears: powerful but free special attacks. Each Technique has three upgradeable qualities: Tech (1-50), Speed (Low or High), and Wait (A2 - A0). Tech increases how powerful a Technique is, but the game does not tell you how powerful a given Technique is. You can see that R-Blade is Tech Level 3, but not how that compares to R-Drill at Tech Level 2. Speed effects whether or not the Technique can be set to Square-Circle/Triangle-Circle. Low Speed Techniques can only be set to Square-Square-Circle/Triangle-Triangle-Circle/Square-Triangle-Circle/Triangle-Square-Circle. Speed upgrades are exorbitantly expensive because the developers correctly determined High Speed Techniques are broken as heck. Every button you press in a combo string costs 2AP, and your characters only generate 4AP per turn, so High Speed Techniques can be used every turn without sacrificing any action economy efficiency. Wait determines how long it will be before you can act again after using a Technique - the lower the number the sooner. This barely matters, and as such, is pretty much free. All Techniques are either short-range or long-range. Long-range techniques can only be equipped to Triangle-Circle and Triangle-Triangle-Circle. Short-range techniques can only be equipped to the other slots.
Next, let's take a brief detour to talk about Equipment: most characters have a weapon they use in all their attacks, and it can be upgraded. Some characters fight with their bodies and instead have an auxilliary weapon they can spend 6AP on to deal similar damage as one of their 2AP attacks. Why this works like this is between Xenosaga and God. Some characters of both kinds can equip bullets to their weapons to change their properties. Every character has three armor/accessory slots. Only one piece of armor for body and head each can be equipped, but not everyone can equip head armor for some reason. Accessories can be equipped to all three slots if you want, however.
Skill Points can be spent to learn Skills from unequipped accessories. Skills are what accessories do, but now you don't have to have the accessory equipped, or can put on both the Skill and accessory for double effect. Also, each character has three Skill slots, making an effective total of up to six accessory effects per character at any given time.
Ether Points can be spent to cast spells in battle. Don't confuse them with Ether Points, which can be spent learning spells from each character's unique skill tree (but don't confuse them with Skills, which are a different thing we already talked about). Spells don't have an unlock cost. Instead, the prior spell has an Evolve cost. Anything branching off of a spell can be "Evolved" to by paying the original spell's Evolve cost. Also, you can spend half a spell's Evolve cost to teach it to a different character. There is functional overlap between spells from different characters, but the cost/power/range/equip-cost ratio can be different. Once a character knows a spell one way or another, it can be set for use. Each character has twelve spell slots, but spells might take more than one slot.
Additionally, human-or-close-enough characters can be assigned to an Anti-Gnosis Weapon System, or AGWS (commonly pronounced "eh-guhs" a bit like "aegis"). Once assigned, the appropriate character can spend a turn getting into or out of their AGWS. Each AGWS can be equipped with up to three weapons. AGWSs have two hands, two shoulders, and one auxiliary slot, but you can only use three total. AGWS weapons tend to have per-battle ammo and higher AP costs, but are about as strong as Techniques to compensate. If your AGWS has two of the hand weapon equipped, they can spend 6AP on W-Act, a more powerful attack that uses both weapons simultaneously, even if the AP cost for using both in one turn would be otherwise impossible. AGWS have FP instead of HP, and while they have a lot and have high defense, it can only be repaired at maintenance hangars or using relatively rare items. Each AGWS also has three gear slots, which are accessories for AGWSs. AGWSs do not level up, instead you must purchase better frames and generators to increase their FP and DPow (???) respectively.
In battle, characters are take turns, and turn order is displayed in a sort of truncated version of FFX's turn order line. Characters can build up Boost Points in battle and spend them to take their turn immediately after the current one, so long as they aren't already on the turn order line. The main reason to do this is the Event Slot, which advances one step every turn, and effects the results of actions taken. The slots are as follows: Empty (no changes), Critical (improved critical hit rate), Boost (improved Boost Point accumulation from attacking), and finally Points Up (2, 4, or 10 times more TP, EP, and SP from killing an enemy).
Now, here's my advice for fighting battles using all these complex systems: Upgrade a short-range and a long-range Techniques speed for each character as soon as possible, then funnel some points into those Techniques' Tech level. Save some points to eventually do this same thing with their first all enemies Technique. Win every battle by pressing Square then Circle or Triangle then Circle. Try to kill big enemies on the Points Up turn. Congratulations, you are now unstoppable.
Why did the designers decide to make Xenosaga five different games at once? We will never know.
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